Municipal, Government and Community College Hiring – Video Pre-Screening
When I think of municipal, government and/or college hiring and hiring processes, innovation and being progressive aren’t two thoughts that jump into my mind. What we have found in a great way is that those organizations love to use recorded video interviews, videotaped interviews and love pre-screening video interviews!
I have seen the light! If you think about it, the military (Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force) is a recruiting machine that has few peers. And, cities and colleges in many cases are the largest enterprises around in terms of hiring and employment, how do they get there?
We have a new client in the City of Roanoke, Virginia. Their two top HR people, Keli Greer and Carolyn Glover are some of the most progressive HR people I have come in contact with. They have a mandate and a charge to find and hire the best for their city and they take their job seriously.
They got into contact with us when they were in a bind. Evidently, they have used videotaped pre-screening interviews for years and their provider could not turnaround quick enough. They found us and with our quick turnaround time (48 hours to get webcams to candidates, interviews immediately) they were able to get their recorded video interviews in quickly for the city council to review.
We have done this many times, this is our business, it’s what we do but I found out something so interesting in working with them. Basically, we found a whole new market!
After some research, it turns out that video pre-screening, whether it be videotaped, video conferencing or now HireVue recorded video interviews, is commonplace in municipal, governmental and college hiring!
All over the country, cities big and small get candidates to take video taped interviews where a proctor asks them questions for review later by a hiring committee! The usual process has a turnaround time of 3-4 weeks. The municipal, government or college hiring process to receive videotaped interviews to be reviewed later by committee is enshrined in their eyes and from what I have learned in speaking with new clients since signing up the City of Roanoke is that theses organizations are looking to innovate and improve their hiring processes (think HireVue)!
This offers two lessons -
1) You may find great markets in the most unbelievable of places – keep your eyes open!
2) The next time you are looking for great hiring practices – look up the people on top of those bills you pay or grades you receive, wisdom can be found anywhere!
